book, [spoiler
if you haven’t read Cinder] Cinder is in prison. Let’s forget about her for
a moment because this book’s title is Scarlet, which means now our protagonist
is a red haired French girl named Scarlet Benoit. Scarlet lives in a farm in
Rieux, part of the European Federation, with her grandmother, Michelle Benoit.
Scarlet’s grandmother goes missing and as the police stopped the investigation,
she wants to look for her herself. Then she meets a street fighter named Wolf,
who may have information about her grandma’s whereabouts. Together they embark
into the adventure of looking for Michelle Benoit, but Scarlet isn’t sure if
it’s all right to trust this stranger, or what his intentions may be, but
she’ll do anything to find her grandmother.

How does this relate
to Cinder you may ask, well, let’s go back to Cinder… she is in prison, and
while trying to escape she meets Carswell Thorne, a criminal from the American
Republic, and they escape together. The link between Cinder and Scarlet is
Michelle Benoit. Cinder finds information that leads her to her, and goes to
Rieux to find her because she is the only person that may know something about
her past. [These are not spoilers at all, if I recall correctly, they mention
it in the first half of the book]

I bought this book
when I finished Cinder because I really needed to know what happened next. It
surprised me a little that we switched our attention from Cinder to Scarlet, I
thought we wouldn’t know of Cinder until near the end of this one, but there
are chapters where we see what Cinder is doing, as well as what Kai is doing,
thou these two are never together in this book… and in the end Cinder and
Scarlet’s story fuse into one.

Scarlet is a brave,
strong, intelligent and mature girl…although falling in love with a guy you
just meet isn’t mature at all. I really liked her personality, she is
passionate and fierce, a really good female lead.

Wolf is ambiguous at
first… or the whole book. I never trusted him at all, he is serious and always
leaves you with the feeling he is hiding something. He is physically super
strong and a good fighter.

It’s easy to feel the
chemistry between these two characters since the beginning, but anyways, to me
their romance was insta love, and I didn’t like that at all, I think they
developed feelings for each other too soon.

Another new character
is Thorne, he is funny, sarcastic, a womanizer, and sometimes kind of an idiot,
but a funny one. He is handsome and has a lot of charm, although in this book I
was indifferent with him that changed near the end of the book.

Cinder keeps
struggling with her thoughts about Kai, the fact that Levana wants her head, and
that Levana is threatening Kai to get married with her or she’ll start a war. She
has decided one thing: she must stop Levana.

Kai doesn’t appear
that much, and when he does he is complaining about something, specifically
about Levana, or thinking about Cinder and whether he should believe her or
not.

I must say this is my
least favorite book of the series, I liked Cinder better. Anyways, in this

one
the plot advances enormously, we get to know a little more about Levana’s plans
and about cinder before becoming a cyborg. The reasons I didn’t like this book that
much is because I never felt connected or convinced by Scarlet and Wolf, they
are good characters, but not my favorite of the series and the whole book was
mostly about them, my favorite parts were the ones where Cinder and Thorne
appear. The first half of the book was kind of slow but as pages pass by it
becomes more interesting and with a lot of action, also it has a lot of blood
in comparison with Cinder, this because of the whole thing of the army of mutant
soldiers of the queen.

Scarlet is supposed
to be a retelling of red riding hood, but as with Cinder, I completely forgot
about that, the only resemble I see is the name Wolf and that Scarlet always
wears a red hoodie.

This book helps to
introduce new main characters, and widens the cultural diversity because now we
have the Asian emperor, Kai; the French red haired girl, Scarlet; the street
fighter with Middle Eastern features, Wolf; the American thief, Thorne… and the
Lunars. The plot makes enormous advances; we get to know more of Levana’s
intentions and of Cinder’s past when she wasn’t a cyborg. It’s easy to get
attached to the characters because they all have different personalities, each
character has endured hardships and in the end they will have a goal in common:
all of them must stay one step ahead of the vicious Lunar Queen Levana. It’s a
great book, but not my favorite of this series, but if you already read Cinder,
you MUST read this one, and if you haven’t read Cinder… What are you waiting
for?